Pearl of great price

When Daniel Pearl was taken hostage in January 2002, one of his kidnappers' demands was the completion of the US transfer to Pakistan of F-16s, held up since that country's nuclear tests of 1998. That the US has at last approved the sale is only the latest reason why Pearl died in vain.

It seemed a strange demand at the time, perhaps because even that time was more innocent than this time. Since that was before we learned that Omar Saeed Shiekh, the abduction's mastermind, was both Osama bin Laden's "favourite son" and an asset of Pakistan's ISI. It was Omar who wired more than $100,000 to Mohammed Atta in the weeks before 9/11 on the instruction of ISI Director Mahmood Ahmed. All Ahmed suffered for his travails was an early retirement and a comfortable sinecure. The buddy of Atta and George Tenet was not even interrograted by the FBI, and questions regarding his role in the 9/11 money chain were scrubbed from official White House transcripts.

Here's how Bernard-Henri Lévy answers his question, Who Killed Daniel Pearl?

"Isn't that, incidentally, what President Pervez Musharraf himself said when, the day after the murder, in an astounding, angry outburst, he exclaimed that Daniel Pearl had been 'over intrusive' - too curious, sticking his nose in places he shouldn't have? Didn't Musharraf give it away when, in a comment cited in The Washington Post (among others) on 23 February 2002, he dared to declare, 'Perhaps Daniel Pearl was over inquisitive; a mediaperson should be aware of the dangers of getting into dangerous areas; unfortunately, he got over-involved in intelligence games.'

"So the question then becomes: Why? What had Pearl discovered, or what was he in the process of discovering, that condemned him to death? What is the stolent secret that, for his captors, was out of the question for him to walk away with?

"The relationship between al-Qaeda and the ISI, of course. The tight web of relations between the two organizations, the two worlds."

Though Pakistan has yet to give up the ghost of bin Laden, its "War on Terror" shadow-boxing with al Qaeda has produced preternaturally timely results for Musharraf. This has been a fairly straightforward task, on account of the broad grey zone where al Qaeda and the ISI become indistinguishable. Giving up a "terrorist" or a "mastermind" is not so hard when many of them are also operatives or stooges, whether they know it or not, of military intelligence. Musharraf gets to play America's good strong man, and the revelation that Pakistan has clandestinely purchased nuclear components from the US will not change that.

The US pursues its ambitions in Central Asia under the flag of a bogus crusade, while Pakistan plays along with the fiction it helped to engineer and strengthens its hand. So everybody's happy. Even, maybe, India, now that "Lockheed Martin has offered to build 'exclusive' F-16 fighters for the Indian Air Force."

Happiest of all, as always, the arms merchants.


More from Kay Griggs

If you've seen the first part of the Kay Griggs interview, discussed here, you may want to click right and save here for the second, and last.

Unfortunately I need to add a few words of regret, and caution.

The two 20-minute clips are culled from eight hours of interview. The strength of the first clip is Griggs' speaking chiefly from her and her husband's experience. I was hoping for more of the same in the second (for instance, details of her husband's purportedly explosive diary). Unfortunately, too much time is given to Griggs' opinion on irrelvant matters, and about which her opinion is no more informed than mine. (Frankly, I could care less what she thinks of the bombing of Dresden.)

Another annoyance is Eric Hufschmidt's frequent interruptions and wild tangents. It's hard to say this, because I appreciate his hosting the files and bringing Griggs' story to a wider audience. But he handicaps the chances of a receptive audience when he pauses Griggs mid-thought to interject, à propos of nothing, his own conjecture that the lunar landings were hoaxed.

Talk about a poison pill! Many will already find Griggs' information regarding institutionalized homosexual blackmail, rape, and ritual paedophilia in the highest ranks of the US military and government hard enough to swallow, without Hufschmidt making them gag on his own fringe fixations.

And perhaps, maybe, I should talk, since I have fringe fixations of my own. But Hufschmidt is entitled to make a case that Neil Armstrong took one small step on a soundstage; I just think he does truthseeking a disservice by throwing this into the mix here, on Kay Griggs' tape, which undercuts its effectiveness as a teaching tool.

I'm persuaded by the two clips that Kay Griggs has something important to say. And I'm grateful to Hufschmidt that I now want to hear the other seven hours and twenty minutes.